I just wish, maybe, that I'd started conducting earlier. I was about 40 when I started. Apart from that I don't really have any regrets. Is that bad?
I would like new people with new ideas to come into it and change it.
Music is a continuum and the modern and avant-garde composers of today will be part of the standard repertoire 30 years from now.
If the (British) Arts Council give you money, they also tell you how to spend it.
So I've never found there was any particular separation between the two cultures at all, musically speaking.
Mozart has written opera, symphony, sacred and chamber music - not to mention his piano and violin concerti.
Taste is changing, style is changing, and players abilities are changing.
Most Beethoven symphonies require 80 or more instruments, and the late romantics even more.
The awful thing about a conductor becoming geriatric is that you seem to become more desirable, not less.
As you know, there are certain languages that lend themselves very easily to vocal use.
We don't want other people poking into our artistic pie.
If we perform the romantic repertoire we need more musicians.
There are some sounds that English singers find quite difficult to manipulate.
Initially we performed in halls with capacities of 1,000.
I think the quality of something like the Beveridge, for instance, will have a life of its own.
